Pudge is this week’s guest on our nostalgic baseball card series where we ask players to rip into some old wax packs (in this case, 1992 Topps) and talk about the players they find. He’s just a few days away from getting enshrined in the Hall of Fame with Tim Raines and Jeff Bagwell. It’s happening Sunday. Pudge joined us on behalf of Esurance, for who he was an ambassador at the recent MLB All-Star game in Miami.

As he opened his cards, Rodriguez found another Hall of Famer he knows pretty well — Nolan Ryan. Pudge tells us about a time he was catching a near no-hitter with Ryan. They’re so close that Ryan wrote one of the forewords for Rodriguez’s upcoming memoir “They Call Me Pudge.”

Pudge Rodriguez opening 25-year-old baseball cards. (Yahoo Sports)

If you’re new to this series, I take the old baseball cards my grandma bought back in the day and open them with baseball people. The cards are worthless now, but the stories are usually pretty great. If you dig this episode, be sure to check out some of previous ones below: